another what if? project

The wonderful thing about assembling fabric scraps into art is the variety of ways to approach it. After finishing the Shattered quilt I encountered my ever-growing Stash of Scraps.

I save all fabric and that requires some management skills.

With little else inspiring me and a frozen world outside keeping me from enjoying the garden, I decided to start another what if project. This time my query is: What if I assembled scraps without plan and separated each scrap composition by a slice of black for one row and a slice of white for another?
The rules of the game:

  • I can not fussy cut or design the scrap compositions,
  • I can not measure or calculate; and
  • I have to pull colors in a random fashion to create them.

Here's the first set:

The first round of random compositions, one row of black and two rows of white.

Of course, my motto is always More is More, creating quilts is often a study in multiples, so I continued without regard to success for a couple of more days. Make enough Log Cabin blocks and put them together and you get something pretty spectacular right? So I continued.

These sets measure about 50" across and 30" deep.

At this point I start to realize that the color sets are creating their own world. See that set of black legs in the lowest white row? Or the little white doorway in the third row from the bottom? The cat ears in the third row from the top? This could be fun when the stitching begins. What better way to use up those pesky accumulations. And what if I recompose the rows?

The composition phase will take some time. And I might have to inject some planning soon as I can see some pieces that are not pleasing me.  Serendipity is all well and good but not for a lifetime. And sometimes it feels like a lifetime till I finish one of these pieces. For now I'm having fun. I haven't run out of scraps, so this journey will continue. Perhaps the final composition will tell me something about the way my thoughts run rampant

And I have already reduced my scrap heap from this to this:

hmmmm … Now what can I do with those little strands of color with thread tails?